By: Stefan Brink:
LIKE many South Africans, I have recently discovered Facebook. And, this is hard to admit as someone who trades on his tech smarts, it seems I am late to the party. South Africa has discovered the social networking side of the internet, and we are flocking to it.
Facebook is the name given to a social networking website that is analogous to the school paper facebooks that is famously used as props in high school movies. It falls in the same category of the ubiquitous MySpace, but sets itself apart as the forum for the working person.
A user of Facebook gets a profile page, which typically lists names, contact details, contact info, photos and assorted other details of the user’s choice. Each person’s profile page will, most importantly, also include a list of friends and contacts and the social networks they belong to.
It is this social networking feature which defines Facebook, and which makes it so dangerously addictive. On average, a user will spend 19 minutes daily on Facebook, catching up with friends, posting comments on their profile pages, and generally exploring a brand new social frontier.
Source: News24
